Recently, communications between computer systems for data and information exchange has been significantly developing thanks to the Internet, which is known to have rapidly spread on a global level by virtue of being supported by public communications networks, both traditional and technologically advanced, such as ISDN, ADSL, GPRS, and others.
Success of this phenomenon is indeed due, also, to the availability, in real time and affordably, of information and data stored on servers located all over the globe and internetworked so that they are reachable through the various last mile network access services.
As regards the price of operations on the net, it has to be considered that it is directly bonded to the cost of the access connection from a user's computer to the access point into the net. The network access points are identified, for example by telephone numbers which are made available to the users by each Internet Service Provider (ISP), in order to allow the connection to the Provider's computers, which are part of the network. As it is known, their primary function is to support Internet access for their subscribers. For this, they maintain a subscribers database which stores all users' identification data. In addition, they typically offer value-added services such as electronic mail, access to sites of the net by assisted, or not, search procedures, storage space for user personal data, commercial news or other information news visible to all users of the net, and other services.
Thanks to these services' quality and diversity and also to a growing variety of end-user devices supporting access to the Internet, such as computers, advanced means interfacing TV sets, mobile telephone apparatuses, Personal Digital Assistants, etc., the number of Internet users has been increasing very rapidly. Therefore, the relevance is easily understandable of getting quickly connected to the net through affordable access points, that is points included in the user's telephone district or area, or in very near areas.
In order to better understand the difficulties that can be associated with the above, it has to be considered that, looking at the current connection modalities, the user has to choose a specific Internet Service Provider. The chosen ISP identifies the user through specific identification data. For the connection, the Internet Service Provider publishes a set of access numbers, for example telephone numbers, which point to the ISP's Points of Presence and can be stored in memory means of the user's apparatus connecting to the net. For connection cost minimization, it is important that an access number can be selected which coincides with the provider's access points nearest to the place where the connecting apparatus is located.
FIG. 1 illustrates schematically the accessing of data on Internet network 100, a distributed computing network environment. The participants in the Internet are a wide variety of machines, owned by a wide variety of organizations and individuals, all able to communicate and share information. For example, the Internet network 100 includes a plurality of Internet sites 105-1 to 105-q. These Internet sites are generally operated by corporations, universities, and governmental organizations. Each Internet site may include one or more repositories of information and resources that may be accessed over the Internet. Each Internet site e.g., 105-1 and 105-q, may include a plurality of WEB servers e.g., 110-1 to 110-r and 110′-1 to 110′-n, respectively. Each of these WEB servers may provide a “home page” to be visited, files to be read or downloaded, applications to be shared, and the like.
The Internet network 100 also includes multiple points of presence (POPs) 115-1 to 115-s that are operated by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These ISPs are in the business of providing Internet access to end-user stations, generically referred to as 120. As mentioned above, the costs of the telephone connection between a user's computer and an access point to the net represent an important part of the Internet connection costs and thus, the geographical locations and distribution of the POPs 115-1 to 115-s are important. For sake of illustration, it is assumed that POPs 115-1 to 115-3 belong to a first geographical location, referred to as 125-1, and POP 115-s belongs to a second geographical location, referred to as 125-2.
As it is apparent from FIG. 1, two problems may arise when a user needs to set a connection with the ISP whom he has a supplying contract with. Firstly, if the POP of the ISP is located in the second geographical location 125-2 while the user is temporarily located in the first geographical location 125-1, the communication costs between the user and the point of presence will increase. Secondly, if the closest POP is saturated, the user wanting to nonetheless connect must select another POP, possibly in a different communications district, which would increase communication costs. For example, if POPs 115-3 and 115-s belong to the same ISP and the user is located in the first geographical location 125-1, he may be forced to set the connection with POP 115-s when POP 115-3 is saturated. This situation may arise even though POPs 115-1 and 115-2 do have capacity available since these POPs really belong to other ISPs.
Likewise, the subscribers of ISPs that have constrained access infrastructure capacity (low-density POPs distribution, limited Network Access Point capacity, etc.) may experience difficulties and sub-optimal costs when establishing connections.
While these problems may certainly be avoided by improving geographical distribution of POPs and increasing the number and capacity of POPs for each ISP, this may not be practical due to the required expenses and ISP investment potential realities. As a conclusion, there is a need for a method and system for sharing points of presence between Internet Service Providers wherein the use of these shared points of presence may be billed efficiently.